Fairy God Knight
by plasticGalaxy
Summary: Feferi held up her hand and tilted it back and forth, wiggling her fingers in the rays of light that refracted off the ring's center pearl. "Are we married then?" Eridan cracked a smile at her and Feferi could see his teeth as his dark lips furled back, wicked sharp and crowded together like a shark's. She shuddered involuntarily. "Yes, we are." AU, Humanstuck.


Feferi woke up hungover and hanging out of a passenger-side window, not the greatest combination. Her hair was tangled and partly trapped underneath her, makeup wiped completely from the half of her face that had been resting on her folded arms. Her bottom lip was so dry it had split in two places and she tasted blood when she swiped her tongue over it.

She let out a soft sigh and pulled the chap-stick from her back pocket without bothering to turn her head: Part of her knew she should be panicking but the other part knew exactly who was driving the restored mustang. This was confirmed by not only the bright, sparkling mother-of-pearl wedding ring around her slender finger but also by the familiar accented voice that sounded once she had popped the top off the balm and started swiping it across her painfully cracked lips.

"Mornin' Fef."

The heiress pushed her hair over one shoulder, careful not to catch her fingers in the thick snarls, and fixed her gaze on the man sitting in the driver's seat. Eridan Ampora had bottle-blonde hair with a bright stripe through the front and thick rimmed glasses that made a frame for his startlingly violet eyes. The constant and familiar shape of a striped scarf rung his pale neck, strips of lighter and darker blue knotted at his throat. He looked younger than his age of twenty-eight but Feferi knew that if she looked out of the corner of her eye, caught him at the perfect ratio of shadow to light, the contrast would sharpen his features to wicked jagged points that set her teeth on edge.

"Where are we?" she returned just a beat too late, voice rocky and gravelly-low from her dry throat.

As he held out his coffee, black and overly sweetened in the exact way she hated and he loved, Feferi shifted the focus of her gaze back and forth, trying to find the right contrast that would turn him into the bright-light creature she knew when they were just kids playing on a beach. She could picture it now, crashing waves licking at their ankles she squealed in delight and thew her arms around Eridan's waist, sunlight pouring in sheets down onto the blindingly white sand. Even out in the wet heat of the day he wore his scarf, thick knot pressed against the hollow of his throat as he looked down at her.

"On the way to Paradise," he said without a hint of irony, wavering over the sound of the 'w' as it left his mouth in that peculiar way he'd always had. It sounded like the letter was stuck in his throat for just a split-second too long, dancing over the tip of his tongue before kicking off his teeth to finally reach her ears. He was teased plenty when they were young but Feferi had always found the way he spoke to be lovely, melodic like undulating waves. He did the same waver over the letter 'v' and in some sentences it sounded quite a bit like singing.

Feferi held up her hand and tilted it back and forth, wiggling her fingers in the rays of light that refracted off the ring's center pearl. "Are we married, then?"

Eridan cracked a smile at her and Feferi could see his teeth as his dark lips furled back, wicked sharp and crowded together like a shark's. She shuddered involuntarily even as the urge to brush her fingers over them flared up inside of her. "Yes, we are."

"Oh."

Bright green signs flashed past as they flew down the twisting road, curving around the mountain in a tight arc until they finally came out on the other side. The highway was suspended over a cliff and the air that pushed her hair from her shoulders was wet and feral like right before a great storm. Feferi sucked it in through her mouth, letting the salt sting the inside of her throat. There was nothing quite like the feeling of the ocean air rubbing her red and raw, though she often thought she was the only one who enjoyed that sharp burn.

The sun was dripping gold and red over the horizon, spilling like sticky thick blood across the glittering expanse of the ocean. The sight was breathtaking and it took Feferi nearly ten minutes to realize the car was no longer moving. She carefully unfolded herself from the seat, twisting her hair into a bun on top of her head to keep herself from running her fingers through the snarled mess. She pushed the long strands that still spiraled down around her face back and straightened the thin, loose material of her shirt without thought. The fringe that lined the hem tickled the tan skin of her thighs.

She said: "Why are we here?"

Eridan just took her hand and led her inside without a word. His fingers curved around her, palms kissing, and Feferi could only think that his skin felt like ice. The door was painted a bright and cheery purple, the exact shade of Eridan's eyes, and it was a sharp contrast against the slate gray that colored the walls of the large two story house.

The inside was the same utilitarian gray, monochromatic but not dark. Her first thought was that she would need to redecorate, splash some of the colors of the outside world across the walls. Her second wa_s, since when am I staying?_

This whole ordeal was a drunken mess. So it went:

Eridan proposed to Feferi every month, precisely on the thirteenth, and had been for nearly a year now. Each time she refused, often declining even the basic invitation for dinner by slipping out the back door of the art gallery where she worked. This month was no different from any other.

"Oh come on, he's a sweet guy!" her roommate singsonged as she skipped by Feferi's open door, lithe body wrapped up in a towel with her raven-dark hair dripping water behind her on the carpet.

Feferi herself was sitting cross-legged on her bed, leaning backwards into a nest of pillows and plush toys, tapping a pen-tip against her lip as she flipped through a book of negatives sitting propped up on her knees. She attempted to ignore the other girl, but Jade Harley was not one to be deterred for any length of time.

Jade appeared in the doorway again, this time with her wet hair wrapped up in a towel and a dress pulled on, a wand of lip gloss between her thin fingers. Her nails were bright blips of sunshine yellow against the pale whiteness of her skin."He's a little high maintenance, sure, and he does complains a lot. Oh, and he makes that really weird noise when he doesn't have anything to say! But he really does seem sweet!"

The heiress looked up just long enough to hold a strip of negatives against the light from her lamp. She made a noise of consideration and then slid it back into the plastic sleeve "Darn, this one didn't develop right."

"Feferi!" Jade stomped her bare foot melodramatically and rolled her eyes even as a smile twitched the edges of her lips up, amused. "You should at least give him a chance! Now get dressed, Dave put our names on the list at the front door of his club and there's no way I'm letting you sit here all night!"

Feferi let out a long suffering sigh... Which quickly deteriorated into a fit of giggles when Jade started chucking articles of clothing at her. She dodged a pair of shorts and ended up with lacy underwear across her face, a latticework of candy red over her dark brown eyes. "Alright, alright! Let me get dressed!"

The night passed in a blur of drinks, brightly colored glasses of liquor that burned oh-so-sweetly as they went down, one after the other. At some point her phone slithered out of her clutch and into her hand, open and dialing, and her childhood friend was on the other end. His voice was music in her ears as he demanded, _"Fef, where are you?"_ with the waver over the consonants, rise and fall to each word.

Now that Feferi thought about it, surrounded by the gray expanse of uninterrupted walls and the dark cherry wood drawers filled with Eridan's belongings, she realized she had not even stopped to pack any of her own clothes. A map appeared in her mind and she tried to calculate the distance between her apartment in the city and the purple door in Paradise. She had no idea how far they had traveled while she was asleep hanging out the window and before she could open her mouth to ask, Eridan was pulling her through a set of double doors on the second floor.

"Oh my cod," she breathed, lapsing back into her childish habit of using fish puns. Spread out below her was what seemed to be the entire ocean, waves clawing up at the metal feet of the balcony, sending sprays of salty white brine into the air. She sucked in another breath, lashes fluttering shut as Eridan's arms hesitantly wrapped around her from behind. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was here."

Feferi leaned backwards into him, hands resting on his where they were splayed open-fingered across her hipbones. Carefully she let her fingers curve around his and released the salty-stingy air that scraped her throat raw as it whooshed out of her lungs in one big rush.

"You're the best friend I could have, Eridan."

"Always will be, Fef."


End file.
